Something
I wrote last year…ended up being in the literary magazine, and my friends liked
it, so I thought it might be amusing to *someone*…if not, review and tell me
why, please! Enjoy!

-- a m i d n i
g h t k i s s

Polyphemus vs. the Ithacan Idiot

My eye hurts. No, I mean my eye really hurts.

I think yours would hurt, too, if it'd
just been skewered by a red-hot pole by a sonofa—well,
I won't stoop that low. Anyway, he's called Odysseus,
son of Laertes, and the king of Ithaca. Yes, he was idiotic enough to
tell me all that. Plus more. And of course, the fact
that Odysseus is an idiot who couldn't count to ten if his life depended on it
leads to the question of how a sorry fool like that could possibly blind a
muscular, manly, strong, tall, better-than-the-gods, and most importantly modest, Cyclops shepherd like me. He
cheated, though. It's not my fault. And
you know, that Ithacan Idiot is famed for his genius, but personally, I don't
think he has the brains of Ares. Yes, I can insult that bully of a so-called
god because I, in fact, am Poseidon's son and Poseidon is way more powerful than Ares.
Trust me, you don't wanna
mess with my dad. He's one cool god.

But I
digress.

See, it all started when I came back to my cave yesterday.
Horror of horrors, I found human mortals
in it! There's nothing like human mortals to ruin a
good paint job, my mom always said. And sure enough, when I got inside my nice,
cozy cave, the nice brown sheep-liver paint I slapped on the walls just last
week was now a more 'muddy' instead of 'mahogany', if you know what I mean. Not
exactly the effect I was going for.

I tried to take it. I tried to be nice. I went about my
chores like nothing was wrong. I took care of my cute
little sheep. I straightened up. I kept my cool. Until I got
to the cheeses and skins of milk. More than half of them were gone.

Now, a Cyclops can take a lot. We're
tolerant about a lot of things. But when you take my
food and ruin my paint job and not to mention make a Zeus-threat on me…that's
suicide. I mean, if there's one thing you don't do, it's
to take a Cyclops' food. So it's really not my fault
that I gave 'em a little Hades, right? They deserved
a heckuva lot more trouble than little
ol' me could hand out.

And trouble is what the Ithacan Idiot
got.

I mean, I didn't do a lot. Heck,
I only ate two of his men. Out of what, twelve? I
figured it wasn't that bad. Obviously, they didn't agree with me. So I ate a
couple more the next morning, just to shut them up. And
lemme tell ya, crunchy
Greek isn't the best way to start your day. Cap'n
Crunch is much better.

To make a long story short, while I was out herding my sheep
that day, those dirty little trespassers took my best hat-rack, sharpened it to
red-hot in the fire, and got ready. I came in all happy and chomped up a couple
more men (I added ketchup this time, tasted better). Then their leader, who
identified himself as one Nohbdy, got me drunk!
Drunk, I tell you! I will never forget the absolute indignity (it was amazing
wine, though). Then, when I was sleeping and totally defenseless, they took
their poker and stabbed me in the eye (hurt
like crap, it did).

And that foul Greek tricked me! When
I yelled to my fellow Cyclopes about Nohbdy, they all
laughed at me and told me to go cry to my dad!

Then the stupid Greeks had the nerve to steal a ride out
of my cave on my sheep! Even though I was blocking the door, they still had the
nerve to sneak out! So, of
course, I got mad and bounced a couple rocks after those stupid mortals and
their ships. Seeing how I was blind, of course, they missed.

And that's when the Ithacan Idiot
gave me the four-one-one all about himself. Speaking of
which…Dad? A little help here?